 Charlize Theron, is being deluged with praise for her performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. "What Charlize Theron achieves in [writer-director] Patty Jenkins' Monster isn't a performance but an embodiment," Roger Ebert comments in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Ms. Theron drops all pretense of starlet beauty and locates the beast within her character," Chris Vognar observes in the Dallas Morning News. "Theron has rendered herself 100 percent unrecognizable," writes Desson Thomson in the Washington Post. "Not since Robert De Niro morphed into hulk dimensions to play heavyweight boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull has there been a transformation this powerful and effective." For the most part, Monster's filmmakers share in the acclaim. Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes: "Monster brings the horror stories of everyday life down to a recognizable level - even as the actress inhabiting that story remains startlingly unrecognizable." But Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution hands the filmmakers a "C" grade, suggesting that writer-director Jenkins has been unable to focus the story on Wuornos's "pathology and pathos." She concludes that "Monster isn't entirely the movie it could be but, as is, it's still compelling." |
